USA TODAY Review

Oprah’s new book: ‘The Twelve Tribes of Hattie’

If you read The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, you will understand exactly why Oprah Winfrey selected it as the second title for her relaunched book club.

An exploration of race, gender and struggle, Mathis' debut novel tells the story of an African-American woman named Hattie. Mathis uses Hattie's life and the lives of her children to illuminate "The Great Migration" of Southern blacks to the North. We meet Hattie in 1925 at age 17 — a new wife and young mother up from Georgia now living in Philadelphia. We bid farewell to her at age 71 at the end, when she's a grandmother living in New Jersey.

The mother of 11 children, Hattie puts up with her philandering husband, finds love with another man, and suffers. Babies die. Children betray her, or are stricken with physical and mental illnesses.

Those who succeed financially — one becomes a minister, another marries a doctor — are either frauds or crazy. Bleak doesn't begin to capture the despair, misery and hardship of this woman's life.

Hattie finds no joy in being a mother with little money and a lot of hungry, difficult children. In turn, Hattie's inability to convey to her children the love she does feel for them underneath her angry, rigid surface warps their adult lives, which turn out no happier than their mother's. With one or two exceptions, the male characters in this book make Alice Walker's The Color Purple read like a celebration of the strong black man.

No question, the author is talented. Mathis writes with power and insight. Though less lyrical, she is a more accessible writer than Toni Morrison.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie might remind readers of an earlier novel: Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (sans the happy ending). Both share the same gritty realism of growing up poor on the mean streets of a Northern city.

Reader Reviews - From Goodreads

Showing 1-5

Comments

Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "X" button in the top right corner of each comment to report abuse. Read more